Good morning!

You Get What You Pay For

According to a newly released Hay Group Survey, one in twelve companies use turnover metrics in their executive’s performance, and more and more companies are pushing the metrics to the middle mangers.

Shocking, huh???  Companies tying turnover rates to middle managers.  What, they just figured out that employees quit a boss, and not a company?   Perhaps they just read my first book.  But they might have skipped an important section.

According to the 2008-9 Employee Hold’em National Workforce Engagement Benchmark, one quarter of today’s employees are “Reluctant”… reluctant to work hard and worse yet, reluctant to leave.  These folks are staying retained, but that’s all they are doing.  They have minimally acceptable production and attendance, they don’t go the extra mile for customers, and they don’t play well with the other employees in their sandbox.

Should managers and executives be rewarded for using Golden Handcuffs to trap their employees?  Making the cost of exit too high through wages and benefits is a very effective retention strategy.  There is a reason that the federal government has the strongest retention of any industry, with retention nearly 2 1/2 times longer than the national average.

Paying people to stay works.  Paying people so much they can never leave, works.

But you’re rewarding the wrong actions.

ENGAGE YOUR EMPLOYEES, AND RETENTION WILL BE THE ICING ON THE CAKE.  You’ll get sick if all you do is eat the icing.